Finance Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I will not risk repeating what he has said, but it is the reality. I was one of those who gave evidence to the review of the loan charge set-up because it was quite clear that it was causing huge problems for many decent people in my constituency. I am sure it was the same for Members on all sides of the House; I do not for one moment pretend that it was a problem for my constituents alone.

I recommend to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary some of the amendments and new clauses that we have been speaking about. I will not go through all of them, but I do want to make this point. Amendment 33, which allows an umbrella not to be an intermediary and still operate, provides strict conditions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden laid out those five conditions, which are critical. I recommend those to the Financial Secretary; I am not going to repeat them, because we would just go on doing that all night.

I want to deal with amendment 34 in a bit more detail. The important thing about amendment 34 is that, in reality, all inside-IR35 workers could easily be paid via a recruitment agency payroll—that is the key bit here—and umbrella companies are of benefit to recruiters, not to workers. Under the original drafting of the off-payroll rules, an umbrella company could classify as a payment intermediary, so payment would have to be made to the umbrella net of tax, reducing an incentive to exist. The behavioural effect will mean agencies will put workers on payroll if they are not outside IR35. The key thing is that this would give the sector a year to re-gear and provide its service as agencies in a payroll payment bureau-type manner, instead of the Government taking other decisive action, including banning certain practices and statutory regulation.

I am trying to be reasonable about this to the Government. I do think that this is really important. I am going to conclude on this. Overall, if we look at the purpose of the amendments and new clauses in this area, I think they set out what the problem is. The people who will get hurt by all of this in the end, when the Treasury finally decides to do something about it, will be the people who were the victims of this, not those who set these schemes up.

There are five points here that are critical: the whole purpose is to stop overnight aggressive tax avoidance schemes introduced and encouraged by some unscrupulous agencies; stop overnight the exploitation of contractors, forced into schemes that adopt malpractice to skim moneys from contractors; stop overnight the kickbacks being used that encourage malpractice; provide sunset clauses to ensure that the sector has until 6 April 2022 to prepare for the changes; and make agencies and clients liable for any malpractice, thereby removing the incentives to encourage it.

These are very simple, basic points. We are not asking for a revolution; we are asking for sense. I know exactly where this is going because in 29 years I have seen this time and again—do not move; later on, blame somebody else; and back comes the Treasury to say, “We’ll now get that money back”. I think the loan charge—I come back to this—is the biggest example of where, when things goes wrong, it is those who have suffered who end up paying the penalty, not those who skimmed off the top and are now living somewhere outside the reach of Her Majesty’s Treasury. I simply say to the Financial Secretary, with all due deference: please, please give consideration to this and at least have a proper review so that we may engage with this in due course and settle it.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

First, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I rise to support my colleagues on the Front Bench and new clause 24 about the surcharge on overseas buyers: the extra stamp duty that is charged. Although we are seeing a 2% uplift, it is not what was originally promised, and even that, I would say, is still not enough to prevent people from speculating, particularly in my constituency and elsewhere in London, on the expensive London housing market and overheating that housing market.

I came across this level of investment in my early days in this place—I have now been here for 16 years—when I discovered that whole blocks of new developments were being bought up overnight. I could not work out who was doing it. I then managed to inveigle my way on to the distribution lists of some of the estate agents, which were advertising the properties in Hong Kong and Dubai, and they sold over a weekend.

These were not homes for local people. They were often bought up by finance companies overseas and sold on. The original reason for the extra stamp duty surcharge was to try to curtail that to some extent, but I do not think it is enough. Foreign investors are buying homes, which are becoming commodities; they are advertised with yield—it is simply about increasing the rent. As the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), highlighted, at least £53 million and counting in revenue has been lost from the Exchequer at a time when we need it more than ever. The excuse is often that developers need the money because they cannot operate without that cash-flow model. I think they would adapt pretty quickly. In my constituency, there are blocks that local people have kept their eye on, wanting to try to buy, only to find they have already been sold en masse overseas. A stamp duty increase would help a little bit.

The stamp duty holiday has been helpful to many people, but all that contributes to fuelling demand for housing while the Government are not increasing supply. Those rising house prices put homeownership out of reach of so many of my constituents and people up and down the country. It is having a major dampening impact on people’s lives and livelihoods and on the economy in the long term. It does nothing for private renters and nothing for those in desperate need of affordable housing.

We are now able to go out and do our normal roving surgeries on doorsteps, and I will give some examples of people I have met in the last week alone. Faisal works in the NHS. He has three children in a two-bedroom council flat, and he has been bidding to move to a bigger property for 10 years, but such is the demand in my constituency that someone in housing need does not get to move. If they are homeless, they now get stuck in a hostel room for years, whereas only five or so years ago it was for about six months. Jane—not her real name—and her husband live with two large teenage boys in a two-bedroom flat. I have known her for some years, having seen her at surgeries. I happened to be on her doorstep the other day, and she made sure that I saw how big her boys have become. She has been coming to see me since they were toddlers, yet she still cannot get rehoused. This is no criticism of Hackney Council, which is doing a fantastic job of trying to build, and is building, affordable social housing, but it cannot keep pace with the demand. In the last week alone, two women I knocked on the doors of were sharing beds with their 12 and 13-year-old sons respectively.

One of the saddest cases is an NHS porter I met less than 10 days ago who shares a room in a private rented home with his 16-year-old daughter. He works. He could not qualify for affordable housing even if he wanted to, because he has no recourse to public funds, despite propping up our NHS in one of the most challenging years in its history. He is doing all the right things—working, trying to be a good father—but he cannot afford private rents. That is not surprising: it is at least £1,500 a month to rent a two-bedroom flat in my constituency; £750,000 to buy a two-bedroom flat; and rent for a three-bedroom house is not much shy of £3,500 a month.

We need to increase stamp duty immediately, while monitoring its effect, and we should increase it further for overseas purchasers. We should not have a housing market that has led to homes being owned by finance vehicles or absentee landlords who have no interest in it being a home but simply see it as an investment. Homes should be homes. Investment is all very well, but this is really damaging the future prospects of children in my constituency, some of whom will never have not only their own bedroom but maybe even their own bed between now and when they hopefully earn enough money to leave home, although frankly we are a long way off their earning enough money to buy a £750,000 flat. The Government really need to step up. They talk about levelling up, but that is certainly not happening for many people in my constituency.

Knife Crime

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer)—I know that I am not meant to call him that, but he is genuinely a friend—on securing this debate. He, our colleague the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and I have discussed how to deal with knife crime, which is a problem nationally, a problem in London and a particular problem in the borough that the three of us represent. I will take each aspect of the problem in order.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to the debate. The issue of knife crime tends to be shovelled away because the media too often see it as a spat between members of different gangs; it only ever breaks the surface when somebody they cannot pigeonhole is abused or murdered, as in the terrible event that happened recently in the hon. Lady’s constituency. I pay tribute to the victim’s family for their behaviour and their demeanour—our hearts go out to them. Yet somehow the media’s game always seems to be, “As long as it is not people we think are important, it is acceptable.” I will cite some figures later to suggest why that is the case.

Violent crime is increasing, not just in London but across the country. It exacts a terrible toll on our most disadvantaged and impoverished communities. The London murder rate has reached the highest level for a decade, with stabbings and shootings often linked to gangs and the supply of drugs. People often say that a lot of it is not related to the gangs, but even when the gangs are not directly involved, the gang culture on our streets has a massive effect on young people’s behaviour, even if only defensively. Many who are not involved in the gangs end up being bullied or coerced for not wanting to be part of the process, and sometimes they succumb and find themselves trapped. The gang culture is sapping away at some of the best of our young people; they are exchanging their future prospects in return for short-term gain, or what appears to be gain.

In London alone, more than 25,000 incidents of serious violence were recorded across the 32 boroughs in the 12 months to the end of June 2018. Most of those incidents were completely unreported to the general public, except maybe in the local area. In my borough, Waltham Forest, the number of knife crime offences was 27.34% higher than in the previous year. This is a growing problem. Intriguingly for the three of us who represent the borough, the increase in knife crime in Waltham Forest is significantly greater than in the Metropolitan police’s service area as a whole. We have a local problem, a city-wide problem and a national problem.

Violence against the person has been on an upward trajectory in the borough for several years. Since 2010, there have been an average of 525 violent crimes per month, but there has been only one month since April 2015 with fewer than that. That is a shocking statistic that tells us what a daily event knife crime is. I saw that at first hand when I went out recently with a police patrol—I am sure many other hon. Members present have done the same. It was on a Friday afternoon, not a Friday night; everyone assumes that things are all right in the afternoon, but in the space of three and half hours we attended one shooting, two stabbings and a knife threat to a family.

The police said, “This is not prime time—it will really kick off after you’ve gone.” That tells us just about everything we need to know. We went at speed up and down the borough—from one end of my constituency to the bottom of the constituency of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead. I swear to God: it was an eye-opener. I did not think my eyes needed opening, but I was wide-eyed by the time we had finished.

Commentators too often say that London is a city of 8 million, with 19 million annual visitors, so the level of violence is a problem but not a crisis. I have read articles that say, “Yes, we are awfully fussed about this, but it is contained.” That is shocking. Tell that to the families whose children have been damaged or murdered, or to the communities that have been blighted.

It all comes back to the point about culture, because the gang culture blights whole areas. Shops do not open in areas where the gangs operate significantly, because they come under threat. Kids who go there come under threat, too, so the streets become less occupied and people are more worried about going there. There are families whose children are being bullied and are frightened to go out, because they know that they will meet a gang member who will tell them that unless they get involved, something will happen to their families. People disappear from public spaces, and parts of our city end up deserted by decent people because they are frightened and worried. Even if they have not seen anything, hearsay tells them that things are going on in their area.

The point of challenging knife crime is not just that we are worried about violence and crime, but that we are worried about our communities not thriving as they could—their economies are bad, jobs are going and all the rest of it. We need to see the issue in a wider context, because it is about the health of a city.

A decade ago, the Centre for Social Justice, an independent organisation that I am part of, set up a programme to investigate what was going on in cities and look at what had gone right elsewhere. Its report, “Dying to Belong”, was about the nature of the people who end up locked into gangs. We commissioned its authors to look at cities that have had the problem, possibly for longer than London: they went to America and looked at Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Boston and even New York, and then they came back and looked at Glasgow and Liverpool. The Glasgow experience was particularly interesting, and so was the Matrix project in Liverpool; it was perhaps not as comprehensive as the Glasgow model, but it had some similar and very interesting outcomes.

What came across constantly from those visits was that the cities that have successfully controlled their levels of gang activity, and thus violence and violent crime, have all used a two-pronged process. First, policing needs to be absolutely and conclusively co-ordinated with the local area. I accept that the word “consent” is bandied around, but it is more a case of co-operation, understanding, shared intelligence and a sense of where and who to police.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the loss of neighbourhood policing has had a major impact on the situation he describes? The sense of communities working with the police has been shattered.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes—I will come on to that point. It is about intelligence on the streets, both for the communities and the police, and the operational matter of how to target policing.

What came across from Boston and Cincinnati was particularly interesting. Their gangs were very similar to London’s: they tended to be multi-racial in the sense that, unlike in Los Angeles, they were postcode gangs drawn from whoever lived in the community and reflecting the balance of people in the community. In Boston, Operation Ceasefire led to a 63% reduction in youth homicides. The level of violence is different in American cities, mostly because of firearms, but the overall suppression as a result of the operation is staggering. The figures have continued to reduce and have remained low because it is a permanent process. It is not about the police arriving in a borough, targeting people for nine months and then going somewhere else; it is constant, perpetual and part of the community.

The interesting point about the findings and the recommendations of that report is that, too often, we just focus on one or the other. I want to come to the comment made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). Since the report was published, too little of it has been implemented around the UK. There was lots of talk. I talked at length at that time to the Labour Government—it was published under the last Labour Government. There was lots of interest in wanting to take it forward, but the issue comes down to the activity of the cities and the boroughs themselves—they have to want to take the decisions. There are issues for the Government, which are clearly to do with funding and organisation, but there are also issues to do with the local areas.

In the areas where they did pretty much next to nothing about the issue following the report, and carried on in the same way, some 700 young people have been fatally stabbed and shot. I believe those are 700 young people we could have saved, had we operated across the board, comprehensively. The level of co-operation, co-ordination and joint activity is a problem for London, with its 32 boroughs.

I had very interesting dealings with Waltham Forest Council at the time. It is a Labour-controlled council, and has been for some time, but the reality is that it was more important for us to work together to try to find a way through. At that time, to its credit, it implemented much of what the report was about: it brought the Glasgow people down, looked at the report and thought about how to act on it, and it set up an organisation and enhanced support in communities. For a time, the level of violent crime in the borough reduced. It was a good record, and I was proud of that. It was not my political party, but I was proud of the fact that we could get something done—it showed me that the report could work.

Since a while back, the pressure has come off and there have been other distractions, and this whole issue of where the Government funding went and how the boroughs reacted came to life. The point I want to make is that if the changes are not permanent, everything comes back. We see that now in Waltham Forest. I am not by any means attempting to be critical; I just simply make the point that this is not the first time.

The process in Glasgow that has been persistently and constantly maintained contains a number of things. The city was once dubbed the murder capital of Europe: someone below 22 years old in Glasgow was literally more likely to die by being stabbed than through a road traffic incident. That was unlike anywhere else. That is how terrible it was. The films of some of the gang violence going on in the city at the time were really concerning. As a result of the consistent activity in Glasgow, there has been a 46% fall in violent offences, a 73% fall in gang in-fighting and an 85% fall in weapon possession. They call it a health programme, because they talk about the community work at the same time, and co-operation with the health department and the intelligence that is necessary. It is not just about policing.

If it had just been about policing, there would have been a moment when they had reduced the level of crime, but that could not have been sustained forever, because there would have been no stoppage. As they said, they needed to get to the younger kids in the gangs and take them out of the gangs, into remedial work, through community groups and other groups that work to change educational outcomes and that get them re-stabilised—perhaps there is an unstable family, or a family who are threatened and need to be moved. All that has to happen at a community level and be led at the bottom, and it requires us to ask how we focus in on the necessary funding—not just across the board, but in the areas most greatly threatened by gang violence. It is perhaps time for us to ask whether specific areas and councils need a more targeted approach to support them.

Too often, that sort of process is effectively forgotten. I mentioned two cities in the UK that genuinely set about the process, but in all the rest, on all the visits I have been on, the work is patchy. As a result, we thought we needed to look at that report again. I say that as a member, as others are, of the Government’s violence taskforce, which is very helpful for presenting the case to the Government. I genuinely do think the Government are now seized of the need to resolve the situation.

The things that need to be done are not rocket science and they are not new. Although we talk about county lines and the way the drugs trade is changing and stretching out from London, in the end it all comes down to gang activity. If the young kids are able to be in the gangs, the gangs can operate. If the gangs do not have the young kids coming into them, then they die. The guys at the top of the gangs cannot operate without the runners and the young kids taking stuff from A to B, collecting the money and doing all the legwork, away from them. Those are the young people they need and they are the ones they threaten, so the community-level approach of stripping those young people out of the gangs is vital.

The police can target the top of the gangs, take them out and put them through the criminal justice system—throw the book at them—and police them on the streets and do their stop and search through intelligence-led processes. However, as the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said earlier, the reality is about getting the young kids out. It is about them leaving the gangs and taking them out. It is not even early intervention—it is after the event. Even when they have gone into the gangs, we have to bring them out, take them away and get them through other work. Where that is done, as it has been seen and done in those cities, almost immediately the gangs begin to fold in on themselves. It does not matter who is running them—it does not matter if we are talking about the Mali Boys or whoever—the truth is that, at the end of the day, the top guys in these gangs do not operate if they do not have the young kids running and doing the work for them. If we can get to them, it strengthens the policing activity.

We cannot police our way out of this. We need organisations such as those I visited in south London, such as XLP and London Gang Exit, or Gangs Unite up in our area, Key4Life and Growing Against Violence. There are lots and lots of groups who do fantastic work in changing the nature of what goes on.

I have a very simple message. All the patterns and strands of work—from aggressive but targeted policing, through community work and the council working together, all rely on something very important. This is the last strand of what I was talking about, and it is in the book we published.

It is absolutely vital that all the Government agencies and local government agencies sign up to working closely together. Too often in the past, that has not happened with some Government Departments. I say this regretfully, but having talked to the areas that have addressed this issue, I think the most difficult Department to get involved in the giving of intelligence is the Department of Health and Social Care. It holds its intelligence very carefully and worries about it going out. In many households, the health visitor is the first person they will have in and the very last person they will eventually chuck out if they are worried about life. Health visitors hold a wealth of information about the problems of certain families. We need to find a way to use that intelligence.

We talk about early intervention. There are a wealth of signposts when it comes to kids who are excluded from school or playing truant, or families who we know are dysfunctional or already have problems or criminal activity in them. When I went to visit the programmes up in Glasgow, they pointed out to me that too often the courts are simply unaware of the kind of street that they are about to place the kids back into, or the worries about the families. More than that, they talked about why young people in certain areas will not travel to work and take jobs: if the normal map is overlaid with the gangs map, it is immediately obvious why. The young people will not cross the gang areas because they are frightened about crossing, being seen and getting caught.

Cross-party, throughout the Government and local authorities, and through community groups, we have to make a real pledge that we are not going to let this problem go on any longer—that in my borough and others, we will now work together. If money is required for funding, we must find it and make sure it is targeted. We cannot make political capital out of this issue. We have a duty to ensure that the next generation that comes through are not blighted by the times of the last.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has just extolled the virtues of his Department’s support for people with mental health problems, but in reality we know that too many people with mental health issues are coming through the Work programme and not getting work. Is it not time that, for the benefit of those people and of the taxpayer, some of his Department’s money was devolved to local areas so those people can get better support and get into proper jobs?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Like Mr Speaker, I welcome the hon. Lady to her post. This is absolutely an area where we want to take things further and do more work. Mental health conditions are one of the big issues stopping people getting into work. We want to do more on that, and have more treatment and more support through jobcentres. I am happy to discuss that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As ever, my hon. Friend puts it succinctly—but that does not stop me answering his question. He is right. There are three figures that are really important. The Minister for Employment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), talked about bringing down unemployment. Under this Government, the International Labour Organisation 12-month-plus employment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds—the hardest to help—is down 59,000 on the year and 16,000 on the election; the 24-month-plus rate is down 30,000 on the year and 2,000 on the quarter; and of those in social housing, never, since records began, have we had so many households in work. That is the real reason for the Government’s long-term economic plan.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Those on both sides of the House agree that it is important to encourage and support people into work, but under the new benefit cap announced by the Prime Minister, there is not a single three or four-bedroom property that somebody could rent when they need that safety net.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I think the hon. Lady is talking about the Conservative manifesto proposal—I am not sure what other cap she could be talking about.

[Meg Hillier]

indicated assent.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

She is nodding, but that proposal only brings the benefit cap back in line with average earnings, which are £23,000.

Through the cap, the Government have delivered fairness to the system and an incentive to go back to work, and as a direct result, more people are going back to work than ever before. We are asking people to take responsibility for their lives, just as those who are working and are not within the cap take responsibility for their lives.

Universal Credit

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West, and others have not made mistakes. We have been crystal clear about this matter. I stand by the words that have been used and the statements that have been made, as I said earlier. The hon. Member for Rhondda normally does not listen, but just says what he was going to say, regardless of the answer. I suspect that a conversation with him is a very one-way process.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been absolutely staggered to hear the Secretary of State defending a system that, as I have heard repeatedly at the Public Accounts Committee, has had very poor planning from day one and at subsequent stages. We are glad that there is a plan to get it back on track, but let us get back to the real question. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), came to this House and said that the business case had been signed off. Either she is not on top of her brief or she was misleading this House, neither of which inspires confidence.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give two answers. First, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West, stated what is factually correct: that the strategic business plans for this Parliament have all been approved. That is an absolute fact. Secondly, it was I who was not happy with the way the development was taking place nearly two years ago, and who instigated the first process through my red team report. That is correct and I stand by that. Working with the Cabinet Office, we changed the plan. The plan is now being delivered exactly as the Public Accounts Committee, on which the hon. Lady sits, wanted us to deliver it, with all the necessary checks and balances. I would have thought, therefore, that she would congratulate us.

Universal Credit

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

There is no money lost to fraud, error and overpayment under the universal credit system. As we roll it out, the system itself will save a huge amount in fraud and error on the current system, which is a mess. The level of overpayments and clawbacks of tax credits every single year is a scandal; the scandal is that the policy and the programme left to us by the Opposition, which has been failing every year, is costing huge sums of money.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has been very keen to talk about what the previous Government did, but he is in charge now and he was in charge of one of the worst possible procurement processes in government. He has not yet told the House what will happen to the employment support group. It is batted off into the long grass. They are a very vulnerable group of people. Will they have to live through a similar shambles when he comes up with a solution for them?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Quite the contrary; I have made it very clear that by 2016 universal credit will be the benefit that people go on when they apply for employment and support allowance. The people who were on it—we know them as the stock—are the most vulnerable. [Interruption.] Well, that is the term used—those are people who are on the benefit at present. [Interruption.] How pathetic is that? The Opposition used the term themselves when they were in government, and now they try to pretend that they have discovered a new way of referring to such people. Those who are on employment and support allowance will be migrated to universal credit over a period so that we can bring them in safely, securely and to their benefit. Would the hon. Lady want us to rush them in, or does she think we ought to take care over how we do it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

How can the Secretary of State continue to defend the bedroom tax when there are not enough smaller properties for people to move into, even if it were the right thing to do?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I keep reminding the Opposition—and this may be the real reason why they got in such a mess over the economy—that a subsidy is not a tax. They need to understand that a tax is something that the Government take away from people, but this is money that the taxpayers have given to people to subsidise them to have spare rooms. We simply cannot go on like that. I remind the hon. Lady that the Government she was a member of nearly doubled the housing benefit bill in the 10 years they were in power, and that is why we have to take action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many of my constituents rely on the sub-prime lending sector to manage from day to day and to build their credit record. What conversations has the Secretary of State’s Department had with the Financial Conduct Authority in its efforts to improve that sector and to make sure that my constituents get a good service rather than, in some cases, being driven into the hands of illegal moneylenders?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is a very good question. My noble Friend Lord Freud is conducting those discussions, which are in line with all his discussions with the banking and finance sector in advance of universal credit coming in. The hon. Lady makes a very valuable point, and she is absolutely right. I will ensure that we press people very hard on this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What his plans are for the future of housing benefit for people under 25 years old.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

In June, the Prime Minister instigated a debate about the merits and risks of taxpayers continuing to meet the £2 billion bill that automatic entitlement to housing benefit for people aged under 25 brings. More work is required, and that discussion and debate is still going on.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I repeat what I said in my first answer: there is a discussion and debate. The policy debates are likely to go ahead, but I have no plans as yet to implement any policy—there are further discussions to be had.

[Meg Hillier]

When the Secretary of State is having those further discussions, perhaps he will take account of experience in my constituency, where around a third of residents are under 24. Nationally, an estimated 400,000 households are headed by someone under 25 who claims housing benefit, half of whom have dependent children. When he is having those discussions, will he consider the impact on children of his policy proposal?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That would go without saying—all impacts on various groups will be taken into consideration. The main point I would make is that, no matter what else, if we were to implement such a policy, we would have to take into consideration categories of people who might find it incredibly difficult, such as those described by the hon. Lady. There would not necessarily be carte blanche—there would be nuances and changes. However, as I have said, discussions are ongoing, and as she can see, no policy exists at the moment.